Prey – PC Preview
Take a game that’s been in the making for almost as long as Duke Nukem, is being made by the same team as those making Duke Nukem and has had just as much drama and speculation as Duke Nukem and you get Prey, the latest shooter from 3D Realms, Human Head and 2K Games.
Sitting down at 2K Games offices in London, Timothy Gerritsen, President of Human Head and Director of Prey talked us through the game.
Your digital persona in Prey is Tommy, a rough, tough Native American Indian who, despite all the teaching of his Grandfather, has turned his back on the Indian way of life and beliefs and has found his own way in the world. Now Tommy has returned to the reservation for his girlfriend, Jen. Of course, as is the way with these things, Jen has embraced her heritage and culture, says Tim, and now runs a bar on the reservation… Ooookay.
Click for larger imageWalking us through the as yet unfinished opening level, the first thing that strikes you about Prey is not the graphics (after all, these will be dependant on your machine to some extent) but the huge amount of interactivity built into the game. Simply put, everything can be fiddled with. You can flick light switches, turn on taps and play video games should you wish so hopefully Prey is finally killing off that feeling of all the objects just being scenery with all the stuff you can do in the game world.
So anyway, just as you’re (unsuccessfully) persuading Jen to leave the reservation and run off to a life of being a car mechanics other half, a proposition I just can’t see here turning down, a massive alien spaceship appears in space next to Earth.
As usual, the aliens are less than friendly and set about sucking up all manner of people and things from the Earth’s surface as they harvest our planet and its people for their own uses. Rather amusingly, this vacuum like spaceship/planetoid is called the Dysonsphere… and it apparently never loses suction power… not once.
So of course, you and Jen and your Grandfather get sucked up in a classic abduction stylee to then awake trapped in some sort of harness and being processed through the ship. This part is very much like the train beginning of Half Life in that you can do bugger all but watch, but it does give you a sense of what’s going on. You are in fact being processed by the ship for whatever nefarious means the aliens see fit but it’s not long before sabotage allows you to escape your bonds just as you were about to be turned into alien chow-chow.